Uma Thurman on Chaos, Confusion, and Motherhood

Motherhood is the title of actress Uma Thurman's new movie, due out on October 16th.

The movie Motherhood revolves around the chaos and confusion in one mother’s life as she plans a birthday party for her six-year-old daughter.

Funny how party-planning, and its ability to turn chaotic, already sounds quite familiar to me...

Uma Thurman, mom to Maya, 11, and Levon, 7, is no stranger to the chaos and confusion of motherhood either.

“When my son turned 7, I sort of stood up straight,” Uma tells The Times. “And I suddenly realised I had been like this [makes expansive gesture of exhaustion], in one way or the other, for the past 10 years.”

“My big wish now,” she continues, “is to make a little time for myself. I think many women, working women, get this. I mean how do you justify that hour and a half to yourself? When you have this to do and that to do and you want to be there…"

(I'm pretty sure many moms who stay home *get* this too, Uma)

“That’s what Motherhood is about,” she says. “The chaos and the confusion – and also the loss of yourself. Of course, there is a good part to losing yourself – any mother that doesn’t give herself up isn’t a good mother, but at the same time you can get to a point where you can’t reach the identity that helped you be stable in the first place – and that is quite a frightening feeling. I must have gone through years of it. Just years of confusion. Guilty when you’re here and guilty when you’re there, of being torn in half.” She laughs. “Your happiness depends on where you measure in your sense of duty: what’s your shame level today? What have you forgotten, what did you do wrong, what could you do better?"

Oh yeah, that's right, Uma. Tell it like it is.

Uma remembers, “I went to see a doctor a few years ago and he said, ‘I’m going to write you a prescription,’ and I went OK, what’s he giving me a prescription for? And he wrote down on the pad: ‘Hotel: one night a week.’

I never did it. But the idea that the doctor prescribed me to take myself to a hotel alone, to take my books or whatever and curl up on my own… that’s unthinkable.”

Sounds dreamy to me — the hotel room alone and a movie that looks at the real trials and tribulations of moms.